Melba Responds To 'Mystery Grant' Criticism

Australian classical music label Melba Recordings has responded to claims that it received a less-than-transparent grant from the Abbott government earlier this year with an open letter posted to Facebook yesterday.

Artshub last week reported that Melba, which is no stranger to controversy over funding, had received a $275,000 grant via federal Arts Minister George Brandis back in April, despite there not being any active application programs or funding rounds at the time, in addition to the fact that Melba was seemingly able to bypass peer-review checks before receiving the funds.

However, in the (pretty long-winded) open letter, Melba chief executive Maria Vandamme denied almost every aspect of the original reports, claiming they were "filled with inaccuracies and [display] a gross misunderstanding of the circumstances relating to the Melba Foundation, Melba Recordings and its funding".

"Let me be clear from the start and set the record unambiguously straight. None of the money Melba has received from government – not a single cent – has been given at the expense of any other Australian arts organisation or individual," Vandamme wrote in the letter. "Such monies were not diverted from the Australia Council. Every cent, every dollar was in addition to funding already conferred on the arts sector through the Australia Council. No-one lost out.

"Instead, many Australian orchestras, ensembles and soloists gained. Every cent, every dollar was spent in recording them to the highest international standards and in promoting those recordings around the world. Moreover, Melba’s accounts are audited independently and signed off by the Australia Council."

Vandamme goes on to clarify that the grant was actually for $250,000, not $275,000 — "the GST component is always referred to separately" — and then essentially blames the Australia Council for Melba's inability to engage with peer assessment for such processes.

"It is the peculiar priorities and confined criteria of Australia Council programs – lacking the flexibility or will to consider the scale and intent of our operations and poorly designed to accommodate them – that has barred Melba from the convention of peer assessment. Melba has never sought to sidestep such a process," Vandamme wrote.

"Instead, Melba’s peer assessments have been carried out by myriad respected international music journals and commentators who consider our recordings in the context of an international marketplace that demands artistic and technical excellence. What we do is predicated on those assumptions and standards and not on an incongruous administrative system that pits neighbour against neighbour for support from a limited public purse."

However, it seems an odd clarification to make given earlier examples in the same letter, used to demonstrate why Melba shouldn't have to undergo peer assessment to begin with.

"Many arts organizations have been and continue to be directly funded by the government," she wrote. "Melba is not a unique case. Australia’s leading orchestras and opera companies, the ABC and ANAM are all directly funded without recourse to the Australia Council and not, as a consequence, subject to peer assessment."

Vandamme offers up another seemingly contradictory point with regard to the label's claimed 2012 CD sales income of less than $40,000, first by saying such figures are "confidential", then by highlighting Melba's apparent transparency when it comes to its finances.

"CD labels do not publish their sales income. Not even the ABC does as this is always deemed confidential market-place information," she wrote initially, before much later asserting: "Our finances have never been a matter of secrecy. They are as publicly available (in our published annual accounts) as our objectives have been."

The entire diatribe boils down to Vandamme reiterating that there is nothing untoward about a business lobbying for its own cause and finding ways to obtain funding in the face of an allegedly rigid and unwelcome system — essentially, a couple-thousand-word expansion on her claim in 2012 that Melba's critics were simply "jealous" of its success.

You can read the full letter here, if you're so inclined.